CDT Europe Coordinates Letter from Public Interest Technologists Urging the EU for an Evidenced-Based Approach to Child Protection Online
Today, a group of over 30 leading academics and public interest technologists from across Europe wrote an open letter – published by Politico and coordinated by CDT Europe – urging European Parliament members and EU countries to listen to their expertise on encryption and artificial intelligence and consider a complete overhaul the draft EU law on child sexual abuse online.
The experts expressed deep concern at the proposal, in particular its impact on child rights and democracy more broadly. They highlighted the technical infeasibility of the proposal and how the pervasive monitoring it would introduce would result in imprecise scanning and errors that would have serious implications for those involved. Methods such as hashing and machine learning to detect malicious content are seriously limited. The experts also confirmed that the proposal as drafted would break end-to-end encryption.
British Public Oppose Secret Surveillance Powers and Want Strong Protections for Encrypted Communications
CDT released nationally representative polling data revealing that a the British public are broadly concerned about the security, privacy, and free speech consequences of allowing law enforcement to access encrypted communications.
Responding to the EU-US Negotiations on Reciprocal Data Exchanges for Border Procedures
CDT Europe, together with 29 other civil society organisations and academics, sent an open joint letter to the Council of the EU regarding the worrying direction taken by the European Commission in the EU-US border negotiations with the U.S. government.
Open Joint Letter on a Public Reassessment of the EU-US Adequacy Decision
On 29 June, the US Supreme Court ruled that US President Trump can remove the leaders of independent agencies and commissions, overturning nearly 90 years of precedent limiting executive power. This decision raises serious questions about one of the key safeguards underpinning the EU-US Data Privacy Framework adopted in 2023: independent supervision.
Return of Mass Scanning of Private Communications through Undemocratic Procedure
CDT Europe responds to the European Parliament's vote to revive the interim derogation from the ePrivacy Directive, commonly known as “Chat Control 1.0”, which provides the legal basis for the voluntary, indiscriminate scanning of private communications for known and new Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), and for the solicitation of children.
